What To Do When You Lose Motivation To Pay Off Debt

Inside: If you ever lose motivation to pay off debt faster, you’re not alone! Here are the tips and tricks I use to get back on the wagon when I’ve fallen off.

I came back from a financial blogging conference this September where I rubbed shoulders with some of the biggest names in personal finance blogging. Some of them make enough money in a single month that they could completely wipe out all of my debt in one fell swoop!

I also got my very first payment from this blog last month—$2.45, and that was after 11 months of blogging.

At that rate, I’ll have completely paid off my debt using my own blog income in another 30,919 years.

Sometimes I wonder, what’s the f#$%#ing point? After all, I could honestly not pay my debt and still survive. I wouldn’t die. This isn’t the first time I’ve felt like this, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

I’ve been able to pull myself back up from my bootstraps each time I lose motivation to pay off debt, thankfully. But it’s a problem that a lot of people face, and some people really do give up hope and resign themselves to a life of debt.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though. Here are some of the tips and tricks I’ve used over the past year that have really helped me when I’m feeling low:

As a scientist, I like to pride myself on logic and facts over waffling human emotion, and so I’ve planned to pay off my debt according to the debt avalanche method.

Still, when I’m feeling down about how my progress is going, I often consider switching to the debt snowball method just because I know it’ll make me feel better.

If you’re feeling down and want some quick wins, go for the debt snowball method! It’s not like it’s going to hurt you—you’re not taking on more debt, for Pete’s sake!

Read Stories About People Who Have Paid Off Debt

It seems easy to write off people who’ve paid off their debt because they’re not going through the exact same struggles as you.

I often see stories from people and think, “Yeah, but they make way more money than I do.” Or, a parent might think about me, “Yeah, but you were able to do all kinds of side hustles to pay off debt because you didn’t have four kids to take care of…”

There will always be excuses you can give yourself about why they could do it, but you can’t.

So, here are some stories from people across a range of scenarios that have paid off debt. If they can do it, you can too—you just might have to get creative!

Email Someone Who’s Gotten Out Of Debt

Reading stories from people who have gotten out of debt can be inspirational, but it can also be easy to write these off in the same way you write off stories of marathon runners and BASE jumpers.

Those people exist, but I don’t know any of them (hint: you probably do, but no one talks about their money situations!).

So, get to know people who have paid off debt! Find someone online that resonates with you and email them. Ask them what they did when they lost motivation. Ask them for any tips or tricks.

Pick their brains about what resources they use, what blogs they recommend, what their favorite color is. It doesn’t matter so much; just reaching out and receiving a personal response from another human being who knows what you’re going through can make a world of difference.

Join A Support Network

You’re not the only person going through this, even though it might seem like it. So, reach out for support!

There are a ton of places where you can find others dealing with the same problems:

Affirmations

Write down something like “I will get out of debt” on a piece of paper. Every day, repeat it to yourself. This isn’t some fairy hocus-pocus; if getting out of debt is what you really want to do, reaffirming that trains your brain to focus on doing it. That neural circuitry will help carry you through the tough times when it seems hopeless.

Do this when there’s some quiet time with no one else around. I say that because if I started talking to myself all the time (“I will be an adult today and not laugh at fart jokes”), then Zach might start looking at me as if I had grown an extra arm.

Do it when you can take yourself seriously and you’re not worried about how others will perceive you. It’s weird, but it works.

Record Your Progress

Sometimes it helps to look at how far you’ve come, even if it’s just a little ways. I keep track of my debt in a spreadsheet and every time I make a payment, I enter in the new principal balance and it spits out “% Paid Off.” I actually get excited to make loan payments now (even if I’m just paying the minimum), because I get to see the “% Paid Off” column tick ever upward.

For even more nerdy debt-payoff fun, check out the free Undebt.itprogram that’ll calculate all sorts of fun stats like your debt-free date, how much you’ll pay in interest, and how much you’ll save by paying it off early.

If spreadsheets aren’t your thing, try keeping track on a piece of paper. Make a series of boxes representing $100 (or $1,000, or $50, etc..) chunks up to the amount of debt you have, and fill a box in each time you’ve paid off that amount.

Make an old-school thermometer like we did back in elementary school to track fundraisers. Put together a chain of construction paper links and pull one off each time you pay off a chunk of debt.

Any way you slice it, keeping track of where you are and how far you’ve come in your debt payment journey can help.

Give Debt The Middle Finger

When you’re tired of being sad, it’s time to get mad. Debt is holding you back from the things you want to do. That’s not cool.

It’s OK to get mad at your debt, as long as you channel all of that rage and fire into something you can act on.

So, I give you permission: get mad. Get angry. Get fired up. Write a breaking up letter with your debt. Burn your monthly debt statements (after you make sensible photocopies for recordkeeping, of course). Hold an Office Space-esque debt-crushing party.

6 Comments

The best thing you can do, in my opinion, is to automate your debt repayment. I also think debt can be a great motivator for increasing your income. So instead of focusing your energy on debt repayment per se, focus on increasing income and reaching goals (i.e. $500 a month in extra income). Ultimately it will help you pay off debt faster and “feels different” than being lazer-focused on debt paydown.

Great tips! That’s definitely another piece to the puzzle. Once I realized how much debt I really was in, it lit a fire under my butt to hustle! Now I’m at the point where I’m almost bringing home more money side hustling in my free time than my full-time day job!

Great post! I feel like this entire year I’ve just lacked the focus and drive to deal with the debt. Interestingly, I do have the energy LOL! Now, I’m super motivated to get it done. Sometimes we can be a bit hard on ourselves when we don’t meet our goals. Now, I’m just going to regroup and get it done. I love the new logo btw.

Haha, thanks Michelle! It is hard when you don’t meet your goals – often women are really hard on themselves. I just read a book called The Confidence Code about women and confidence and it talks a lot about this – very interesting read! I’m glad you have the energy and focus to start dealing with it again – everything in its own time! 🙂